


fool's gold

by Glissando (Capriccioso)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universes, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multiverse, POV Third Person Omniscient, hurt dubious comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-08
Updated: 2018-10-08
Packaged: 2019-07-27 22:28:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16228586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Capriccioso/pseuds/Glissando
Summary: This world they all live in treats them pretty badly. Maybe it's time they went looking for something else.





	fool's gold

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't actually watched the show since Season 6 but apparently Gabriel died *again* and that's just such bullshit I set out to fix it.
> 
> I didn't. I just spilled a vat of angst all over everything and I'm so sorry.

Dean wants to say that it started when Balthazar pushed them through a window into a world wildly different from their own, but in truth he suspects that it may have come before that - Camp Chitaqua, his stint as Dean Smith, Gabriel’s seemingly endless TV universes, even the Djinn dream, in a way.

This idea that the world that he lived in - this world that was constantly tearing him and Sam and Cas and everyone they loved apart, ripping them at the seams until they bled desperation like the stuffing of a couch - that this world was not everything, didn’t need to be *their* world, had snuck in long before he’d had to pretend to be an actor playing himself. 

It came in drips and drabs, just stray thoughts most days. Could he leave all these people behind? They were real, their suffering was real, the people Team Free Will saved were *real*. On most days, the answer was no.

But sometimes the knowledge of what could be chaffed; he wanted to be happy. He wanted for Sam to be safe, forever, not just from the evil of the week. He wanted to lean over and kiss Cas, had wanted it so badly for years he didn’t even care anymore if he got rejected, he just needed to do something with this burning urge, just this side of too soft to be called painful.

He couldn’t; he didn’t know why. Maybe it was because Cas was an angel despite the fall or the death or the Leviathans, though it hadn't stopped him from kissing Anna, but there was just something, some fundamental law of this universe, that kept him bound. Dean couldn’t talk about what he felt for the angel without his tongue seizing up and adding ‘like a brother’ to his ‘I love you’, couldn’t reach for a kiss without his body betraying him and going for a hug instead.

Maybe it was just because those bozos writing his TV show didn’t like that he was bi, but fuck ‘em, they were the ones who’d put Cas right there, so close, so beautiful, so fucking adorably smitey. 

And then there was Sam. Brilliant Sam.

***

And then there was Sam. Broken Sam, who’d loved Jess more than anything in the world and watched her burn for no reason at all other than his own birth.

For Sam the idea came much later, a long time after their stint in a world where he was just a character on TV, even. 

After Jess, he had spent a long time and a great many partners trying to forget; he didn’t let himself get attached to keep them safe, but even that didn’t always work.

It had been the same way with the cute janitor back then, some flirting, some winking, but he hadn’t meant any of it seriously, knew the other hadn’t as well.

Only after he was revealed as the trickster, when his harmless act dropped into grandstanding, did the spark come to life in Sam, an embarrassing flicker of attraction in his gut. Sam had always had a soft spot for the trickster. He’d been funny, in a sharp, cold way, in a way that pleased Sam, who’d always thought he could use someone who punished him for all the things he’s done.

Gabriel was both the motivation and the inspiration for the idea. 

After all the horrible things this world had done to them, it still never registered to Sam that he could just ... abandon it. Much in the same way that most people never realize there is literally nothing stopping them from smashing all of their furniture on a whim, Sam never toyed with the idea of hopping into a kinder universe the way Dean did.

And then, after eight long years, he’d laid eyes on a broken, beaten Gabriel, sharp tongue out of commission, and his heart had broken right then and there. He’d cut the wire that Asmodeus had sown his mouth shut with with care, hands steady, soul shaky.

Gabriel was different now, no trace of the frostbitten gold of the trickster, just the burn of expensive whiskey and the smooth warmth of honey. The flicker Sam had felt at the idea of paying penance for his sins at the feet of the trickster was nothing against the flame burning in his chest at the feeling of his new friend Gabe’s head pillowed in his lap as Sam researched and Gabriel goofed off with his phone.

And then he’d died, again, screaming, before Sam had even had the chance to tell him, to ask him, to kiss him - and why didn’t he? He’d wanted to. Just like that, again. Just like Jess, but this time he was different, this Sam didn’t want to blame himself anymore; what else could he blame when God himself had been helpless to sculpt this world into something better?

The inspiration came later, in the bunker, when Sam lay in bed, in the dark, remembering the first time he’d caught sight of the curious warm amber sleeping beneath the polished gold brick of Gabriel's eyes. Back when he had wanted to teach Sam a lesson that he’d both craved and rejected: Mystery Spot.

The months after the Wednesday Dean died were a blur, true, but they’d happened. He’d lived them, and then Gabriel had snapped his fingers and that whole, real, world had disintegrated.

Sam had an idea, and it probably wasn’t a good one. He prayed to Gabriel, explaining it all, planning all the details, hoping that his not-dead-after-all archangel might pop into existence and decide to tag along. (He didn’t.)

But what about Cas? Loyal Cas, where would he go?

***

Cas went where Dean went; it had started because he’d first admired then loved Dean’s soul, Dean’s motivations, but over time, he’d become a real person all by himself. He had his own wants now, and, unsurprisingly, most of them included Dean.

Castiel was intimately aware that he would never have Dean. He’d tried to confess his love countless times, certain he’d be rejected but nevertheless wanting to be honest to a man that hated being lied to. He couldn’t. His mouth changed shape right before the words came - his vessel’s mouth, of course, but not even his true form could speak the words in Ennochian. In the logic of this universe Dean was not meant for him, and he accepted it quietly for a very long time.

And then when Dean told him all about the other place, where the man wearing Castiel’s face was someone named Misha, Cas had suddenly remembered the multiverse.

The universe that rejected his wants wasn’t the only one he could live in.

He didn’t think Dean would agree, so he kept quiet, wondering sometimes if he had the courage to wander off alone, look for a different version of Dean, but he always decided against it because the man in front of him was *his* in a way a different universes’ Dean never would be.

And then Sam sat Cas and Dean down one night. He had a spell and a speech; he only needed one of those.

***

It took Castiel a while to feel out a world that would fit. Nothing supernatural at all, Sam had demanded; Dean had been frustratingly vague on his motivations, but the way he wouldn’t stop looking at Cas gave him hope. “And, uh, make sure Gabriel exists? Somewhere we can find him?,” Sam had added, flustered.

To find a world where his brother wasn’t an archangel was the hardest part; most worlds were mundane after all. But he did find one, in the end.

***

The very first thing Dean Winchester did in this brand new universe was kiss Castiel. He had wanted to be more romantic, but, well, Cas looked very kissable in soft afternoon light.

Cas assured Sam that Gabriel lived in this town, but without access to any of his Grace he couldn’t tell where exactly, he was just as human as Dean; Dean rewarded that statement with another kiss, their shared mortality just another piece of closeness in his mind.

Sam was nervous. Dean got the Cas from their original universe, the one that understood and had seen and lived their pain; Sam’s Gabriel was new, a blank slate. Just a normal civilian guy. What if he wasn’t what Sam had lost? What if this Gabriel didn’t want his fucked up issues?

After all the worrying, the reality was an anticlimax. Sam thinks he can get used to those; and then remembers that he will.

Gabriel is the barista of a coffee shop near the college Sam signs up for. He’s funny, first in a sarcastic way, growing increasingly in warmth the more Sam refuses to be frightened away. His eyes are a very human brown, though sometimes, when the sunlight hits just so, Sam can glimpse a sprinkling of golden flecks.

Dean and Cas get married; none of them talk about their old lives in that other world. Sam isn’t sure whether any of them won or lost. The guilt eats them alive, sometimes, on other days, there is nothing but peace and the apple pie life they'd forgotten they'd been chasing once.

This Gabriel likes him just fine, Sam explains the nightmares away with a stint in the army and leaves it at that. Sam loves him, this new, human Gabriel, but sometimes, in the dark, he thinks of the original one, of the darkness and the power and the smirk his human counterpart turns into something much softer.

Sometimes, Sam mouths the same words into this other Gabriel’s skin, over and over, wondering whether he won or lost.

**Author's Note:**

> The words are 'fool's gold'; I was gonna put it in the fic but then I made it the title and saying it twice felt like hitting y'all in the face with a bat. Anyway I'm grumpy because I made myself sad.


End file.
